It had been a year and a half since Kotori had killed the lizards and she was cresting her 8th birthday.

She had spent the time "dungeon diving" with Mari and Amelie. Apparently, Dungeons were just areas where mana would accumulate and become dense which gave rise to "monsters" that would spawn from said mana. The more mana there was in an area the stronger the monster that was spawned. The monster spawns were on a natural timer and was easy to time visits with their spawn time. The thought reminded Kotori of how players would camp boss spawns in MMOs for farming.

Kotori learned that there wasn’t much of a difference between a spirit and a monster. Both were beings that were made of mana and the only difference was whether they were hostile. The lizard they fought was a type of beast spirit.

Areas with a high amount of life would have a lot of mana and thus would become breeding grounds for dungeons. Therefore, dungeons popped up in forest quite often.

Though, Kotori had heard from the few elves in the village who had left the village before that cave dungeons existed and that they were in caves with a high density of mana crystals. She was unsure of what mana crystals were, but the name seemed self-explanatory that they were crystals that could store mana.

While fighting in the dungeon Kotori had spent a lot of time developing her flute skills. She wasn’t like the elves and was bad at close combat. Her stats were low and her only real offensive skill was the discordant song. She was much better at hanging around and letting her allies do most of the work.

Kotori had also finally learned the difference between [Magic Musician] and the musical songs her father taught. [Magic Musician] let her cast spells using the music as a conduit. This meant the amount of mana she could use was unlimited. On the other hand, the songs her father taught her had set effects and a maximum amount of mana that could be imbued within them. The more complex the song the stronger the effect but also takes more skills to cast.

Kotori spent much of the time using [Hunter] and leeching of the kills of other warriors. She had already contributed by raising their stats, so they didn’t bother her for taking a back seat during fighting.

Amelie had grown as well. She had lost much of the baby fat that gave her the cute "girl next door look" and she was starting to gain the wolf-like face of the other warriors in the village. Amelie fought differently than the other warriors in the village. She was not as strong as the other warriors on account of her only being half-elf. So, she developed a roguelike fighting style. Slowly whittling down monsters and then landing a killing blow.

Evidently, it seemed that Shu didn't need to do anything and the gains that Kotori made from [Hunter] would partially apply to him as well.

[Hunter] was a useless skill overall. It could only be activated once a monster was killed and the amount of “EXP” she gained was low.

Kotori still resolved herself to make as much “EXP” as possible by defeating any monster she could even the small ones. Hopefully the [Hunter] skill would get better after a time.

To be fair, she wasn't even sure if EXP was a system in this world, to begin with...

She was beginning to get a little bit of hay fever. Killing monsters was trivial while she was with Mari and others.

She tried to ask if she could go alone but after the lizard incident, the Boss had zero intention of letting her do anything alone.

Kotori was beginning to think it was time to leave the village.

Honestly, it was about time since she was 8 years old she was basically an adult right?

She couldn't just keep being a freeloader right?

“What?”

“16 is the age of adulthood here?”

“8 is basically the new 16 right?”

“Right?”

** ** **

"Denied!"

The Boss had immediately denied Kotori's request

"But I'm old enough"

The Boss glared at her

"Last I checked you become an adult at 16," she said

"But I'm pretty strong" Kotori protested

Indeed, Kotori had grown quite a bit and would be an even match for an average human fighter but otherwise, she was still rather weak in comparison to the truly strong in this world.

The Boss had also taken to seeing Kotori as a surrogate child and thus protected her fiercely. Apparently, the Boss had strung up Mari as a punishment after she heard that Kotori got hurt while training.

Of course, Kotori had grown quite a bit since then, but the Boss was completely right in her assessment that Kotori had no right to leave the village and set out on her own. It was only a year and a half ago she was a desperate child running through the forest after all.

Still, the way Kotori asked her to allow her to leave reminded the Boss of her sister, Asha when she wanted to leave.

Kotori had the same steely determination. It was often hard to see Kotori as a child since her demeanor made her seem a lot older than she really was.

"But…" She tried to protest again

"DENIED!" the Boss said with no room for response

Kotori slumped her shoulder and left the room.

The Boss relaxed once she saw the figure of Kotori leave her house. For a small child, her determination was very troubling to deal with and thus the Boss often had issues with trying to say no to Kotori. Her inner self knew that Kotori was stagnating, but she was unable to allow herself to let Kotori get herself into any more dangerous situations. Even though she had made up with Amelie on the same issue she was still reluctant to let Kotori, who was basically a small child, do anything dangerous.

[Still] the Boss thought as she recalled Mari's report about Kotori's lack of growth

[She needs to grow]